Of all the Gods of the Rigveda Agni bears the closest relationship to the Perso-Jewish Messiah, and it is he also who stands closest to man’s soul. He is rightly called king of the universe, as God of Gods, who created the world and called into life all beings that are upon it. He is the lord of the heavenly hosts, the guardian of the cosmic order and judge of the world, who is present as an invisible witness of all human acts, who as a “knower of nature” works in every living thing, and as a party to all earthly secrets illuminates the unknown. Sent down by his father, the Sky-God or Sun-God, he appears as the “light of the world.” He releases this world from the Powers of Darkness and returns to his father with the “Banner of Smoke” in his hand as a token of victory. Agni blazes forth in the lightning flash from out of the watercloud, the “sea of the sky,” in order to annihilate the Dæmons of Darkness and to release oppressed humanity from the fear of its tormentors. Thus, according to [Isaiah xi]., 4, the Messiah too will burn his enemies with the fiery breath of his mouth; and in this he is clearly a Fire-God. Again, in the Apocalypse of Esdras (chap. xiii.) the Seer beholds the “Son of Man” (Purusha) rise up from out of the sea, fly upon the clouds of heaven, destroy the hostile forces by the stream of fire which proceeded from his mouth, free the scattered Israelites from their captivity and lead them back into their country.[51] But this “first-born” son of the Sun-God and the Sky-God is at the same time the father and ancestor of men, the first man (Purusha), the head of the community of mankind, the guardian of the house and of the domestic flock, who keeps from the threshold the evil spirits and the enemies who lurk in the darkness. Agni enters the dwellings of men as guest, friend (Mitra), companion, brother and consoler of those who honour him. He is the messenger between this world and the beyond, communicating the wishes of men to the Gods above, and announcing to men the will of the Gods. He is a mediator between God and men who makes a report to the Gods of everything of which he becomes aware among mankind. Although indeed he takes revenge for the men’s faults yet he is a gracious God, disposed to forgive, in his capacity of an expiatory, propitiatory and redeeming power, atoning for their sins and bringing them the divine grace. Finally, he is also the guide of souls—he conducts the Gods down to the sacrifices offered by man and makes ready for men the path upon which he leads them up to God. And when their time has come he, as the purifying fire, consumes their bodies and carries that which is immortal to heaven.[52]
Agni’s father is, as has been said, the sky, or rather the light, the sun, the source of all warmth and life upon the earth. He bears the name of Savitar, which means “creator” or “mover,” is called “the lord of creation,” “the father of all life,” “the living one,” or “the heavenly father” simply.[53] At the same time Tvashtar also passes as the father of Agni. His name characterises him simply as modeller (world-modeller) or work-master, divine artist, skilful smith, or “carpenter,” in which capacity he sharpens Brihaspati’s axe, and, indeed, is himself represented with a hatchet in his hand.[54] He appears to have attained this rôle as being the discoverer of the artificial kindling of fire, by means of which any fashioning (welding), any art in the higher sense of the word became possible, as being the preparer of the apparatus for obtaining fire by friction or rotation—“the fire cradle”—which consisted of carefully chosen wood of a specified form and kind. Finally, the production of fire is ascribed to Matariçvan also, the God of the Wind identical with Vayu, because fire cannot burn without air, and it is the motion of the breeze which fans the glimmering spark.[55] All of these different figures are identical with one another, and can mutually take the place one of another, for they are all only different manifestations of warmth. It is this which reveals itself as well in the lightning of the sky and motion of the air, as in the glimmering of the fire, and not only as the principle of life, but also as that of thought and of knowledge or the “word” (Vâc, Veda), appearing on the one side as the productive, life-giving, and fructifying power of nature, on the other as the creative, inspiring spirit. This is the reason why, among the ancients, the God of life and fertility was in his essential nature a Fire-God, and why the three figures of the divine “father,” “son,” and “spirit,” in spite of the differences of their functions, could be looked upon without inconsistency as one and the same being.
As is well known, Jesus, too, had three fathers, namely, his heavenly father, Jahwe, the Holy Spirit, and also his earthly father, Joseph. The latter is also a work-master, artizan, or “carpenter,” as the word “tekton” indicates. Similarly, Kinyras, the father of Adonis, is said to have been some kind of artizan, a smith or carpenter. That is to say, he is supposed to have invented the hammer and the lever and roofing as well as mining. In Homer he appears as the maker of the ingenious coat of mail which Agamemnon received from him as a guest-friend.[56] The father of Hermes also is an artizan. Now Hermes closely resembles Agni as well as Jesus. He is the “good messenger,” the Euangelos; that is, the proclaimer of the joyful message of the redemption of souls from the power of death. He is the God of sacrifices, and as such “mediator” between heaven and earth. He is the “guide of souls” (Psychopompos) and “bridegroom of souls” (beloved of Psyche). He is also a God of fertility, a guardian of the flocks, who is represented in art as the “good shepherd,” the bearer of the ram, a guide upon the roads of earth, a God of the door-hinge (Strophaios) and guardian of the door,[57] a god of healing as well as of speech, the model of all human reason, in which capacity he was identified by the Stoics with the Logos that dwelt within the world.[58] Just as in the Rigveda Tvashtar stands with Savitar, the divine father of Agni, and Joseph the “carpenter” with Jahwe, as father of the divine mediator, so the divine artificer, Hephaistos, whose connection with Tvashtar is obvious, is looked upon together with Zeus, the father of heaven, as the begetter of Hermes.[59]
Now if Joseph, as we have already seen, was originally a God, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a Goddess. Under the name of Maya she is the mother of Agni, i.e., the principle of motherhood and creation simply, as which she is in the Rigveda at one time represented by the fire-producing wood, the soft pith, in which the fire-stick was whirled; at another as the earth, with which the sky has mated. She appears under the same name as the mother of Buddha as well as of the Greek Hermes. She is identical with Maira (Maera) as, according to Pausanias, viii. 12, 48, the Pleiad Maia, wife of Hephaistos, was called. She appears among the Persians as the “virgin” mother of Mithras. As Myrrha she is the mother of the Syrian Adonis; as Semiramis, mother of the Babylonian Ninus (Marduk). In the Arabic legend she appears under the name of Mirzam as mother of the mythical saviour Joshua, while the Old Testament gives this name to the virgin sister of that Joshua who was so closely related to Moses; and, according to Eusebius,[60] Merris was the name of the Egyptian princess who found Moses in a basket and became his foster-mother.
After all this it seems rather naïve to believe that the parents of the “historical” Jesus were called Joseph and Mary, and that his father was a carpenter. In reality the whole of the family and home life of the Messiah, Jesus, took place in heaven among the Gods. It was only reduced to that of a human being in lowly circumstances by the fact that Paul described the descent of the Messiah upon the earth as an assumption of poverty and a relinquishment of his heavenly splendour.[61] Hence, when the myth was transformed into history, Christ was turned into a “poor” man in the economic sense of the word, while Joseph, the divine artificer and father of the sun, became an ordinary carpenter.
Now it is a feature which recurs in all the religions of Nearer Asia that the “son” of the divine “virgin” mother is at the same time the “beloved” of this Goddess in the sexual sense of the word. This is the case not only with Semiramis and Ninus, Istar and Tammuz, Atargatis (Aphrodite) and Adonis, Cybele and Attis, but also with Aphrodite (Maia) and Hermes,[62] Maia and Iasios, one of the Cabiri, identical with Hermes or Cadmus, who was slain by his father, Zeus, with a lightning stroke, but was raised again and placed in the sky as a constellation.[63] We may conclude from the connection between Iasios and Joshua that a similar relationship existed between the latter and his mother Mirzam. Indeed, a glimmer of this possibly appears even in the Gospels in the relationship of the various Maries to Jesus, although, of course, in accordance with the character of these writings, they are transferred into quite a different sphere and given other emotional connections.[64]
Now in Hebrew the word “spirit” (ruach) is of feminine gender. As a consequence of this the Holy Ghost was looked upon by the Nassenes and the earliest Christians as the “mother” of Jesus. Indeed, it appears that in their view the birth of the divine son was only consummated by the baptism and the descent of the Spirit. According to the Gospels which we possess, on the occasion of the baptism in the Jordan a voice from above uttered these words: “Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased.”[65] On the other hand, in an older reading of the passage in question in Luke, which was in use as late as the middle of the fourth century, it runs, in agreement with [Psalm ii. 7]: “Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee.” In this case the spirit who speaks these words is regarded as a female being. This is shown by the dove which descends from heaven, for this was the holy bird, the symbol of the Mother Goddess of Nearer Asia.[66] But it was not the Nassenes alone (Ophites) who called the Holy Spirit “the first word” and “the mother of all living things:”[67] other Gnostic sects, such as the Valentinians, regarded the Spirit which descended in the shape of a dove as the “word of the mother from above, of wisdom.”[68] Viewed in this sense, baptism also passed in the Mysteries as a new birth. Indeed, its Greek name, phōtisma or phōtismós (i.e., illumination), clearly indicates its origin in fire-worship. Thus, when Justin[69] too speaks of a flame appearing at the baptism of Jesus, he alludes thereby to the connection between that solemn act and the birth of a Fire-God.[70] Ephrem, the Syrian composer of hymns, makes the Baptist say to Jesus: “A tongue of fire in the air awaits thee beyond the Jordan. If thou followest it and wilt be baptized, then undertake to purify thyself, for who can seize a burning fire with his hands? Thou who art all fire have mercy upon me.”[71] In [Luke iii. 16] and [Matt. iii. 11] it is said in the same sense: “I indeed baptize you with water; but there cometh he that is mightier than I.... He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” And in [Luke xii. 49] sq. we read the words: “I came to cast fire upon the earth: and what will I, if it is already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with.” Here is a reference to fire falling upon the eyes and being made to blaze up by “baptism,” that is, the pouring on of a nourishing liquid, as we have seen in the worship of Agni.[72]
Just as John, who was closely related to the Essenes, baptized the penitents in the Jordan in the open air, so also the Mandæi, whose connection with the Essenes is extremely probable, used to perform baptisms in flowing water only, on which account they were also called “the Christians of John” in later times. This custom among them was obviously connected with the fact that Hibil Ziwâ, who was venerated by them as a Redeemer, was a form of Marduk, and the latter was a son of the great Water-God, Ea; he thus incorporated the healing and cleansing powers of water in himself. On the other hand, as has been already said, the “anointing” of the God in the Agni Cult with milk, melted butter, and the fluid Soma, served to strengthen the vital powers of the divine child and to bring the sparks slumbering in the fire-wood to a blaze. There is no doubt that this idea was also present in the baptism as it was usually practised in the mystic cults. By baptism the newly admitted member was inwardly “enlightened.” Often enough, too, for example, in the Mysteries of Mithras, with the ceremony there was also associated the actual flashing forth of a light, the production of the Cult God himself manifested in light.[73] By this means the faithful were “born again,” in the same way as Agni was “baptized” at his birth, and thereby enabled to shine forth brightly and to reveal the disorder of the world hidden in the darkness.
“The world was swallowed up, veiled in darkness,
Light appeared, when Agni was born.”[74]